Bed

Tao Lin

“Tao Lin writes from moods that less radical writers would let pass—from laziness, from vacancy, from boredom. And it turns out that his report from these places is moving and necessary, not to mention frequently hilarious.” —MIRANDA JULY

College students, recent graduates, and their parents work at Denny’s, volunteer at a public library in suburban Florida, attend satanic ska/punk concerts, eat Chinese food with the homeless of New York City, and go to the same Japanese restaurant in Manhattan three times in two sleepless days, all while yearning constantly for love, a better kind of love, or something better than love, things which—much like the Loch Ness Monster—they know probably do not exist, but are rumored to exist and therefore “good enough.”

TAO LIN is the author of the novel Eeeee Eee Eeee, the poetry collection Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy, and the poetry chapbook You Are A Little Bit Happier Than I Am. His stories, poems, essays and criticisms (he once reviewed the audience at one his readings for Seattle’s The Stranger) have appeared in Noon, Nerve, Esquire, Bear Parade, The Agriculture Reader, and the Mississippi Review. His most recent novel is Richard Yates. He lives in Brooklyn, New York. His blog is called heheheheheheheeheheheehehe.com

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”“An Updikian minimalism is on full display in Bed, a collection of nine stories that are mainly concerned with romantic relationships and how they fall apart. Lin’s…fiction mixes unpretentious prose and a robust sense of the ridiculous. Lin…is a newfangled writer with some excellent old-school storytelling techniques…An adventurous new talent.”—Time Out New York

“Stimulating and exciting …. It doesn’t often happen that a debuting writer displays not only irrepressible talent but also the ability to undermine the conventions of fiction and set off in new directions. Tao Lin, who is 24, does it.”—The San Francisco Bay Guardian

”[A] harsh and absurd new voice in writing. Employing Raymond Carver’s poker face and Lydia Davis’s bleak analytical mind, Lin renders ordinary—but tortured— landscapes of failed connections among families and lovers that will be familiar to anyone who has been unhappy…. The prose is poetic and downright David Lynch–ian.”—Time Out Chicago